The monstrous Daesh attacks in Brussels last Tuesday, that brought mayhem, chaos and bloodshed to the Belgian capital and left 31 people dead, was heinous in the extreme, coming as they did a mere five months after the group’s equally monstrous attacks in Paris, that took the lives of 130 innocent civilians.
How should the Euro-American world respond to such an outrage? There is the level-headed response, that seeks to methodically destroy every vestige of Daesh wherever it is found in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere as a franchise, and there is the fascist response, where you begin your battle by painting all Muslims around you with a broad brush, branding them as actual or potential terrorists.
In other words, we have on the one side leaders like President Obama, who asserted that “we must be together, regardless of nationality or race or faith, in fighting against the scourge of terrorism,” with the third person plural here clearly referring to people not just in the Euro-American world but to people elsewhere around the world. And on the other side, we have the likes of Donald Trump and the even more unabashedly extremist Ted Cruz, both contenders in the Republican race for president. As for Trump, Exhibit 1 is of course his by now infamous call to ban Muslims — all 1.4 billion of them, from well over one hundred different countries — from entering the US.
To go one better, Ted Cruz upped the ante and, the day after the tragic news broke about the Brussels attacks, told reporters that “we need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhood before they become radicalized,” thus resurrecting a discredited and long defunct effort in New York several years ago that involved a secretive unit of detectives — along with sundry informers — that watched the Muslim community, spying on businesses and mosques, and eavesdropping on conversations, before the unit was disbanded by Mayor Bill di Blasion. And lest we forget, the unit was never able to generate a single terrorism lead throughout its long and costly operation.
Asked by CNN whether Cruz’s plan was something he would support, Trump responded: “Yes, I would. I think that’s a good idea.” (To his credit, John Kasich, the odd man out among the three remaining Republican candidates, said simply: “We are not at war with Islam.”)
It is hardly surprising that Cruz, an avowed fascist — for no other description of him would fit here — advanced a proposal with such disturbing civil liberties implications. Consider, for example, the candidate’s recently named national security adviser: It is none other than Jerry Boykin, the kooky former Pentagon official during the George W. Bush administration, who repeatedly gave speeches framing the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as “holy wars” between Christianity and Islam.
Additionally, Cruz’s semi-literate oaf of a “national security adviser” is on record today as saying that “Islam is not a religion and does not deserve First Amendment protections,” and that there should be “no mosques in America.”
All this rhetoric, comical were it not reprehensible, has already insinuated itself into the public debate, tapping into that frenzy of nativist sentiment long dormant in certain pockets in the American heartland, and in a trickle-down effect creating an environment of in-your-face Islamophobic vitriol that encourages the mainstream, if subliminally, to see Muslims as the reviled “other” — millions of hardworking American Muslims, the overwhelming majority of whom are productive, hardworking, tax-paying, law-abiding citizens. The frenzy is on, and the likes of the billionaire mogul from New York and the racist politician from Texas keep feeding the beast.
Recently, President Obama indirectly rebuked these folks by declaring that “this is not who we are as Americans.” All well and good, but neither were the Germans before the Nazis tapped into their fears of the “other” and their insecurities about the future, ordinary Germans who easily made the transition from patrols of Jewish neighborhoods to Kristalnacht (Night of the Broken Glass) in November 1938, when the Brownshirts arrived there, shattered the windows of well over 7,000 shops, desecrated cemeteries, destroyed synagogues, killed well over a hundred Jews and rounded up 30,000 others.
Is something similar to that likely to happen to Muslims in the US? I doubt it very much indeed, for I believe, as a Muslim American, in President Obama’s declaration that “this is not who we are as Americans.” Still, tell that to fascists like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, either one of whom could be elected next November as president of the United States. Oh, the horror, the horror!
How should the Euro-American world respond to such an outrage? There is the level-headed response, that seeks to methodically destroy every vestige of Daesh wherever it is found in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere as a franchise, and there is the fascist response, where you begin your battle by painting all Muslims around you with a broad brush, branding them as actual or potential terrorists.
In other words, we have on the one side leaders like President Obama, who asserted that “we must be together, regardless of nationality or race or faith, in fighting against the scourge of terrorism,” with the third person plural here clearly referring to people not just in the Euro-American world but to people elsewhere around the world. And on the other side, we have the likes of Donald Trump and the even more unabashedly extremist Ted Cruz, both contenders in the Republican race for president. As for Trump, Exhibit 1 is of course his by now infamous call to ban Muslims — all 1.4 billion of them, from well over one hundred different countries — from entering the US.
To go one better, Ted Cruz upped the ante and, the day after the tragic news broke about the Brussels attacks, told reporters that “we need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhood before they become radicalized,” thus resurrecting a discredited and long defunct effort in New York several years ago that involved a secretive unit of detectives — along with sundry informers — that watched the Muslim community, spying on businesses and mosques, and eavesdropping on conversations, before the unit was disbanded by Mayor Bill di Blasion. And lest we forget, the unit was never able to generate a single terrorism lead throughout its long and costly operation.
Asked by CNN whether Cruz’s plan was something he would support, Trump responded: “Yes, I would. I think that’s a good idea.” (To his credit, John Kasich, the odd man out among the three remaining Republican candidates, said simply: “We are not at war with Islam.”)
It is hardly surprising that Cruz, an avowed fascist — for no other description of him would fit here — advanced a proposal with such disturbing civil liberties implications. Consider, for example, the candidate’s recently named national security adviser: It is none other than Jerry Boykin, the kooky former Pentagon official during the George W. Bush administration, who repeatedly gave speeches framing the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as “holy wars” between Christianity and Islam.
Additionally, Cruz’s semi-literate oaf of a “national security adviser” is on record today as saying that “Islam is not a religion and does not deserve First Amendment protections,” and that there should be “no mosques in America.”
All this rhetoric, comical were it not reprehensible, has already insinuated itself into the public debate, tapping into that frenzy of nativist sentiment long dormant in certain pockets in the American heartland, and in a trickle-down effect creating an environment of in-your-face Islamophobic vitriol that encourages the mainstream, if subliminally, to see Muslims as the reviled “other” — millions of hardworking American Muslims, the overwhelming majority of whom are productive, hardworking, tax-paying, law-abiding citizens. The frenzy is on, and the likes of the billionaire mogul from New York and the racist politician from Texas keep feeding the beast.
Recently, President Obama indirectly rebuked these folks by declaring that “this is not who we are as Americans.” All well and good, but neither were the Germans before the Nazis tapped into their fears of the “other” and their insecurities about the future, ordinary Germans who easily made the transition from patrols of Jewish neighborhoods to Kristalnacht (Night of the Broken Glass) in November 1938, when the Brownshirts arrived there, shattered the windows of well over 7,000 shops, desecrated cemeteries, destroyed synagogues, killed well over a hundred Jews and rounded up 30,000 others.
Is something similar to that likely to happen to Muslims in the US? I doubt it very much indeed, for I believe, as a Muslim American, in President Obama’s declaration that “this is not who we are as Americans.” Still, tell that to fascists like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, either one of whom could be elected next November as president of the United States. Oh, the horror, the horror!
No comments:
Post a Comment